NIGERIA AND BURDEN OF CONTRADICTIONS

JOSHUA J. OMOJUWA argues the need to value our own

Daniels is a Nigerian programmer who attracts jobs from all around the world. One day, he negotiated another one via his Twitter inbox. It looked like a straightforward negotiation between him and his unnamed client. Everything was going smoothly until the client asked Daniels for one detail; where are you from? Daniels answered that question in its shortest form, “I am Nigerian” he said. The next thing he got was, “Hello, I am sorry we’re not open to working with Nigerians at the moment. If there are changes in the future we will let you know”. That was meant to be the end of that situation.

There was indeed a twist. Daniels had posted, “I genuinely wished I lied about being Nigeria”, whilst sharing this story. This was one of those X posts that earned Nigerian leaders lashes and insults from different angles. It is hard to say most of them do not deserve it. Nigeria is here because of years of mismanagement and other outcomes of poor governance. X being extra though, the users were always going to point the fingers everywhere it ought to be. Within minutes, Daniels tweets had been dug out from the archive. One could excuse the tweets if they were from several years ago, but these ones were posts made in 2025, at times just some days from the post that generated the conversation.

“I miss Yahoo”, “money dey Yahoo, no gree anybody deceive you”, “bad or not, I give Yahoo boys accolades, do you know what it takes to convince someone you met online to give you $10k?” and other such similar posts. Some of the posts were posted this month, the same month Daniels came to taste the consequences of the life of crime he at least endorses. One of the toughest things for many Nigerians to do is to establish a connection between their choices and actions and some of the unwholesome realities of the country they complain about. How is it possible for someone to love cybercrime and cybercriminals and in the same breath cry about one of the consequences of their activities? Daniels is not alone on this front. We have witnessed some of our most corrupt, incompetent and unpatriotic leaders and former leaders preach to the country about morality, the need for competence in governance and patriotism.

Nigeria today is the compound effect of all our actions through the years. We have even formed self-defeating mindsets out of some of them. If I got appointed into a government position today, a lot of the ‘congratulations’ messages will be followed with requests of assistance. Those expectations are based on the understanding that I will help myself in that position. Some of those you manage to help will overlook whatever shortcomings of your time in office, others will blame you for not helping them and there will be those who’d accuse you of being corrupt. The fewest of the lot are those who can see that they are a part of an unwholesome cycle that makes corruption the norm.

We sneer at enterprise. Seyi Adekunle OON, known as Vodi, was delivering 400kg worth of finished fashion products in Freetown, Sierra Leone, the same Monday morning he had to endure slandering posts on social media. It was no surprise that it took other entrepreneurs to put his success as a fashion entrepreneur into context. Since 2001, Vodi has gone from a regular tailoring outfit to one catering to the needs of some of Africa’s richest and most powerful people. There is hardly a private spot in Nigeria that commands the sort of power the Vodi HQ in Wuse 2 has been able to attract; the crème of Nigerian society, all of them queuing to do business with a man who has elevated the craft of tailoring into a mega business.

Despite the testimonials from his old clients whose lives had also changed since their first Vodi purchase, in the midst of evidence that the man continues to treat his business with the same seriousness and vigour it took him back when he was just another tailor, the average Nigerian mentality is to treat enterprise with sneers and suspicions, to look for blots on the escutcheon of success stories and to wait for those, “I told you so” opportunities. It remains shocking to me that we do not see that this mindset is deserving of our collective reality as one of the poorest people in the world.

We have mostly suffered the cost of poor leadership. This we have known and talked about for decades. What we refuse to acknowledge is, if the personalities of our leaders have changed through the years and the outcomes of leadership stayed the same, there appears to be an issue with the pool the leadership emerges from. Our leaders are us, we are our leaders. The fundamental difference is opportunity. The motivations and mentalities of the average Nigerian aren’t better than those of the average public office holder. You could argue that the average public office holder is more competent than the average Nigerian. So then, the only reason the average Nigerian ‘is better than’ the average Nigerian in public office is opportunity.

Our mindsets do not differ much either. We are happy to pay the extra sum for foreign products, including designer bags and shoes. Some Nigerians don’t even mind paying a little extra for knockoffs, but we hesitate when the time comes to pay fractions of those sum to buy Nigerian brands. The Nigerian brands who have built the structure to attract premium prices are derided for being overpriced whilst those that aren’t so accused must suffer from being talked about as tools of every imaginable crime, other than what they are; companies creating value and attracting money.

We want to see our country and people become rich, but we are suspicious of wealth created from enterprise whilst we adore billionaire politicians with no known source of wealth creation. Then we cry about the state of Nigeria. We are special.

 Omojuwa is chief strategist, Alpha Reach/BGX Publishing 

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